Mobile communication devices are developing at a rapid pace. Software and hardware performance demands outpace battery technology development. Mobile communication device power consumption and battery life have become important technological considerations.
Battery power consumption is relatively high during circuit switched voice calls, e.g., under the Third Generation Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (3G UMTS), as data is continuously transmitted and received. On average, however, nearly half of the time or even more of a voice call may consist of speech pauses when viewed from one side of a conversation. Significant power savings can be achieved by turning off the receiver of the User Equipment (UE), as well as other related circuitry, for example baseband receive circuitry, during the speech pauses. Turning the receiver of the UE off, however, presents a number of issues. For example, a UE user does not want to miss when the other person begins speaking again, miss data related to comfort noise generation, or miss important configuration information for proper UE function. It would be advantageous to have a solution that combines decreases in power consumption during voice calls while avoiding loss of certain types of information.